Configuring an FPGA means downloading a stream of 0's and 1's into it through some special pins. Once the FPGA is configured, it goes into "user-mode" and becomes active, performing accordingly to your programmed logic function

There are 3 ways to configure FPGA

Use a cable from a PC to the FPGA, and run a software on the PC to send data through the cable.

Use a microcontroller on the board, with an adequate firmware to send data to the FPGA.

Use a "boot-PROM" on the board, connected to the FPGA, that configures the FPGA automatically at power-up.

13FPGA Programming

The behavior of the FPGA (logic function) can be defined by either a hardware description language (HDL) or a schematic design.

Compile the logic function on the PC using the software provided by the FPGA vendor. A binary file is created.

Connect a cable from the PC to the FPGA and download the binary file.

FPGAs loose their functionality when the power goes away (like RAM in a computer that looses its content). We have to re-download them when power goes back up to restore the functionality.

14A simple program for D- Flip Flop

library IEEE

use IEEE.std_logic_1164.all

entity DFlipFlop is

port (

CLK in STD_LOGIC

RST in STD_LOGIC

D in STD_LOGIC

Q out STD_LOGIC

)

end DFlipFlop

architecture behaviour of DFlipFlop is

begin

process(CLK)

begin

if rising_edge(CLK) then

if RST '1' then

Q lt '0'

Ref 6 15FPGA vs. Microcontrollers

Microcontrollers are based on a CPU architecture. As all CPUs, they execute instructions in a sequential manner.

Atmel is the only manufacturer whose devices are fine-grain reconfigurable (the Xilinx XC62xx were, but they are no longer in production). They focus on providing AVR Microcontrollers with FPGA fabric on the same die. These factors aside, their devices tend to be smaller and more expensive than other manufacturers'.

Achronix Semiconductor has very fast FPGAs in development. They plan to ship in early 2007 and claim they can reach speeds of over 1GHZ.

17Embedded System Design in an FPGA

A typical digital system design involves a significant amount of custom logic circuitry, but also includes pre-designed major components, such as processors, memory units and various types of input/output (I/O) interfaces.

In the traditional approach for designing such systems, a new integrated circuit (IC) chip is created for the custom logic circuits, but each pre-designed component is included as a separate chip

Different approach for realizing digital systems, called embedded system design. It leverages the advanced capabilities of today's IC technology by implementing many of the components of the system within a single chip, such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA).

18Technical reasons to use FPGAs in System Design

Offer large logic capacity, exceeding several million equivalent logic gates, and include dedicated memory resources

Include special hardware circuitry that is often needed in digital systems, such as digital signal processing (DSP) blocks (with multiply and accumulate functionality) and phase-locked loops (PLLs) (or delay-locked loops (DLLs)) that support complex clocking schemes

Support a wide range of interconnection standards, such as double data rate (DDR SRAM) memory, PCI and high-speed serial protocols.

19Processors

Two types of processors are available to use in FPGA

Hard Processors

Soft Processors

Hard Processor

A pre-designed circuit that is fabricated within the FPGA chip

Soft Processor

The processor exists as code written in a hardware description language (HDL)

20Advantages of Soft Processors

More flexible compared to hard processor.

Resources are consumed for processor only when they are actually needed in the system.

Multiple soft processors can be included in the FPGA when desired.

21Embedded system design software tools

Two main aspects to the software tools

The creation of the system hardware

The development of software that runs on the processors included in the system.

For creating the hardware circuitry, the tools allow the user to build a system by making use of pre-designed building blocks for processors, memory controllers, digital signal processing circuits and various communication modules (such as UARTs).

The software allows easy instantiation of these sub-circuits and can automatically interconnect them on the FPGA chip.

The Electronic Design Automation tools generate memory maps for the system, allowing the processor(s) to access the systems hardware resources.

Applications of FPGAs include DSP, software-defined radio, aerospace and defense systems, ASIC prototyping, medical imaging, computer vision, speech recognition, cryptography, bioinformatics, computer hardware emulation and a growing range of other areas. They now find applications in any area or algorithm that can make use of the massive parallelism offered by their architecture.

Reconfigurable computing is computer processing with highly flexible computing fabrics. The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to make substantial changes to the data path itself in addition to the control flow.

24References

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_System_Design_in_an_FPGA

http//www.fpga4fun.com/WhatAreFPGAs.html

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconfigurable_computing

http//www.qa-talk.com/news/alt/alt100.html

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vhdl

25THANK YOU

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